Principles
Agent Experience Principles
What your product owes the machines that now use it.
25 of 25 principles
AX-SYS-01
Make your purpose machine-readable
Context and comprehensionFoundational
AX-SYS-02
Serve a markdown version of key content
Context and comprehensionIntermediate
AX-SYS-03
Keep machine docs in sync with the product
Context and comprehensionIntermediate
AX-SYS-04
Let agents authenticate without human-only gates
Access and identityFoundational
AX-SYS-05
Give agents a distinct, least-privilege identity
Access and identityIntermediate
AX-SYS-06
Return actionable authorization errors
Access and identityFoundational
AX-SYS-07
Publish a capability index agents can find
Discovery and navigationIntermediate
AX-SYS-08
Tell agents the next action, not just a menu
Discovery and navigationIntermediate
AX-SYS-09
Expose a machine-readable map of your resources
Discovery and navigationIntermediate
AX-SYS-10
Expose only the tools the agent needs
Tools and capabilitiesIntermediate
AX-SYS-11
Write tool descriptions for the model, not the human
Tools and capabilitiesFoundational
AX-SYS-12
Treat tool descriptions as a trust boundary
Tools and capabilitiesAdvanced
AX-SYS-13
Make consequential actions explicit and reversible
Tools and capabilitiesIntermediate
AX-SYS-14
Design for graceful failure
Recovery and reliabilityFoundational
AX-SYS-15
Be idempotent and predictable where it matters
Recovery and reliabilityIntermediate
AX-SYS-16
Persist state across multi-step workflows
Memory and stateAdvanced
AX-SYS-17
Tell agents when things change
Notifications and changeIntermediate
AX-SYS-18
Be triggerable and context-passable by other agents
Orchestration and handoffAdvanced
AX-SYS-19
Define roles and handoff contracts for multi-agent flows
Orchestration and handoffAdvanced
AX-SYS-20
Make agent activity visible
Observability and governanceAdvanced
AX-SYS-21
Bound autonomy with scopes, limits, and spend caps
Observability and governanceIntermediate
AX-SYS-22
Never trust agent-generated markup in sensitive contexts
Observability and governanceAdvanced
AX-SYS-42
Enforce agent access parity with other mediums
Access and identityFoundational
AX-SYS-43
Design agent-first onboarding — let agents start before humans create accounts
Access and identityIntermediate
AX-SYS-44
Expose feedback endpoints so agents can report on context quality and task outcomes
Observability and governanceIntermediate